17 January 2013

For my money the POS system in EvE has asked players to make a lot of compromises and put up with a lot of hardships in order to use them. These days less people are forced to "live out of" POS's than they were when they were first introduced; mostly thanks to the proliferation of null-sec stations. However there are still a fair amount of WH dwellers and others who put up with the shortfalls of the POS system daily.

For example, a big problem I have personally is the inability to share hangers at a pos with my alliance mates. I have at least one POS that is used by my alliance but I must keep an alt handy in order to assist them with the hangers. The ship array can be set to alliance use, so it seems logical that there could be an alliance hanger module as well. Additionally, I find the permissioning system to be archaic. Advanced or case by case permissions should be available. As it stands EvE players have been "making do" with a POS system that was already bad when it was released. Many of us have been content with the fact that CCP would get around to it; mainly because it may have been terrible but it did at least work. If CCP is going to abandon the promise of iterating on POS design, I believe it will make a lot of people unhappy. It's certainly going to make me sad.

I do understand that POS's affect a much smaller number of players than many things CCP can focus their energy on. However, I feel that they may be underestimating the market at least a bit here. Perhaps if POS's were easier or more user friendly they would become more useful to more players. As it stands many see it as one of those "black magic" areas of EvE that they never want to venture into. I don't think CCP must redesign the whole system but I do think a lot of patient players deserve a little bit of love in fixing some of the biggest drawbacks at the very least.